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<blockquote>''"Everyone here in this room is living on borrowed time. By rights we should all be dead! The only reason that God allowed us this extra ration of life is so we can make life hell for the Hun... In North Compound we are concentrating our efforts on completing and escaping through one master tunnel. No private-enterprise tunnels allowed. Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug - Tom, Dick and Harry. One will succeed!"'' <ref name="AFP"/></blockquote>
The simultaneous digging of these tunnels would become an advantage if any one of them were discovered by the Germans, because the guards would scarcely imagine that another two could be well under way. The most radical aspect of the plan was not merely the scale of the construction, but also the sheer number of men that Bushell intended to pass through these tunnels. Previous attempts had involved the escape of anything up to a dozen or twenty men, but Bushell was proposing to get over 200 out, all of whom would be wearing civilian clothes and possessing a complete range of forged papers and escape equipment. It was an unprecedented undertaking and would require unparalleled organisation. As the mastermind of the Great Escape, Bushell inherited the codename of "Big X".<ref name=AFP/> The tunnel "Tom" began in a darkened corner of a hall in one of the buildings. "Harry"'s entrance was
[[File:Sagan harry-2.jpg|thumb|left|End of "Harry" tunnel showing how close the exit was to the camp fence]]
Tom was discovered in August 1943 when nearing completion. Bushell also organised another mass break out, which occurred on 12 June 1943. This became known as the [[Delousing Break]], when 26 officers escaped by leaving the camp under escort with two fake guards (POWs disguised as guards) supposedly to go to the showers for [[delousing]] in the neighbouring compound. All but two were later recaptured and returned to the camp, with the remaining two officers being sent to [[Oflag IV-C]] at [[Colditz]] for attempting to steal an aircraft.
After the discovery of Tom, construction on Harry was halted. but it resumed in January 1944. On the evening of 24 March, after months of preparation, 200 officers prepared to escape. But things did not go as planned, with only 76 officers managing to get clear of the camp
Roger and his partner Bernard Scheidhauer, among the first few to leave the tunnel, successfully boarded a train at Sagan railway station. They were caught the next day at [[Saarbrücken]] railway station, waiting for a train to [[Alsace]], which had been annexed from [[France]] by Germany.
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